Traditionally, leavened bakery products are made by several tedious steps, including ingredient mixing, dough resting, cutting, proofing and, finally, cooking, e.g. frying or baking. As a consequence of the complex process, expensive equipment (such as mixers, proofers, etc.) and highly skilled labor are required. Among the several steps for making leavened bakery products, all but the cooking step require highly skilled labor.
Because of a shortage of skilled labor, small bakeries, e.g. in-store bakeries, and franchised bakery shops, such as donut shops, face not only high labor costs, but also the problem of inconsistency of the quality of their products. Experience has demonstrated that reliable skilled labor is the key to a successful small bakery business.
Obviously, it would be desirable to provide an intermediate stabilized dough which eliminates the need in the small bakery for both the expensive equipment and the skilled labor. In theory, such an intermediate stabilized dough could be manufactured in a large centralized location, with the intermediate stabilized dough being cut, proofed and thermally stabilized, but not finished cooked. This intermediate stabilized dough, either at ambient, refrigerated or frozen conditions, could be transported to a small bakery where it is finished cooked just before retailing or serving.
For example, in the case of a donut, the last step in making a fresh-fried pastry donut is that of the small bakery shop frying the intermediate stabilized dough, followed, optionally, by icing, glazing or sugaring thereof. Thus, the only equipment required for finished cooking is an inexpensive fryer, which can be operated by relatively unskilled labor. Hence, by using such an intermediate stabilized dough, small retail shops would be able to provide customers with fresh-fried pastry donuts or similar fried leavened products, while at the same time reducing expensive skilled labor and equipment. Most importantly, also such use of an intermediate stabilized dough would standardize the qualities of products, especially in franchised bakery shops. Such intermediate stabilized dough could also be used by supermarket in-store bakery units, warehouse baking clubs, as well as retail outlets of all types.
Despite the obvious advantages of such intermediate stabilized products, the use of intermediate stabilized products has not been adopted to any significant extent and, even when adopted, the use is associated with the concept of low-cost/low-quality products. This is the result of the inferior organoleptic qualities of the finished products.
In this regard, such intermediate products have generally taken the form of precooked products, instead of intermediate doughs, and the finished products are produced by simply reheating the precooked products, e.g. by heating in a microwave oven or a conventional conduction oven (no positive convection means) or a conventional convection oven or combination thereof. During conduction or convection heating, the temperature gradient from the surface or exterior to the center or interior of the product is great. Therefore, the exterior surface of the product dries out due to excessive exposure to dry heat during the time required for the center of the product to be heated. The result is a thick and tough skin formed on the exterior of the product so that the resulting product has a chewy and dry texture. The difference between an undesirable relatively thick and tough skin and a desirable light skin is not determined by skin "thickness" in the literal sense, but rather organoleptically.
On the other hand, if the heating is by way of a microwave oven, the product becomes dry and chewy because the water molecules within the interior of the product are excited by the microwave energy and diffuse outwardly from the interior through the exterior of the product, thereby leaving a dry and chewy product.
Accordingly, prior attempts at providing an intermediate stabilized product for finished heating at the small bakery shop have not been satisfactory. The fundamental reason for this unsatisfactory result is that many bakery products require that a dough be finished cooked (not reheating a finished cooked product) in order to provide the traditional fresh taste of the ready-to-eat finished product. Therefore, if a fresh taste is to be provided, the product to be finished cooked before serving must be a dough; it cannot be a finished cooked product which is simply warmed by reheating, since the fresh flavor will have deteriorated during storage and handling of that cooked finished product.
However, preparing an intermediate dough product has engendered considerable difficulties in the art, and this is especially true when the dough is a leavened dough. For example, if the dough is leavened with yeast, and the dough is not cooked to a finished product, then the yeast activity will continue, and the dough will continue to leaven. Therefore, if the dough is formed into a particular predetermined finished product shape, e.g. a donut shape, the leavening will continue to raise the dough and that donut shape will be destroyed. Thus, absent some other provisions, forming the dough into the correct predetermined shape, e.g. a donut, but without the usual finished cooking, that shape will be destroyed and the product ruined.
Another difficulty in this regard is that most finished products have a desired predetermined moisture content. For example, in a donut, the moisture content of the cooked donut, on a ready-to-serve basis, should be somewhere in the range of the upper 20's to about 30%. If the moisture content is significantly above this range, then the donut will have a soggy taste, which is most unacceptable. On the other hand, if the moisture content is significantly below this range, then the donut has a somewhat tough texture and a dry taste and mouth feel.
Any dough product will contain water, and if that dough product is allowed to remain uncooked, moisture will transfer from the dough to the surrounding atmosphere and dry that dough to a lower moisture content. When that lower moisture content dough is then cooked to the finished product, that finished product will have less than the desirable moisture content. On the other hand, if the dough is stored in humid conditions to avoid such moisture loss, the dough can pick up additional moisture, and when cooked to the finished product, will have a soggy taste. Moisture loss can be partially controlled by packaging the dough in plastic wraps, but the loss is not entirely avoided and is considerably variable. Beyond that, the plastic wraps are difficult to remove. Even if plastic wraps were satisfactory, the problem of continued leavening of the yeast-leavened dough and loss of the desired shape, e.g. a donut shape, would not be avoided.
Further, even if the dough could be stabilized to avoid that loss of shape and moisture, this would be of very little significance if substantial microbial activity takes place in the dough after such stabilization but before cooking and consuming.